


Dear Satan

by tentaclemonster



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Christmas, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Letters to Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28239399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentaclemonster/pseuds/tentaclemonster
Summary: A Christmas tale about a little girl’s letter to Santa, a mail carrier’s dedication to her work, and how the devil really is in the details.
Kudos: 8





	Dear Satan

If you asked anyone who knew Miriam Plackett, they’d all tell you the same thing: there was a woman who did not have an ounce of the Christmas Spirit within her. 

She was never rude about it, her acquaintances would rush to say. Miriam always returned the greeting when wished a happy holiday, always sent a thank you card back to anyone who’d given a gift to her, and there had been many Christmases past when Miriam had selflessly braved climbing a ladder whose legs were buried deep in the snow to hang up tinsel and popcorn on string for her elderly neighbors whose old bones couldn’t handle lifting them to such heights in the cold anymore.

There was nothing about Miriam’s manners that were lacking. It was only that, while everyone else was being cheerful and festive in varying shades of red and green and gold, Miriam was not. 

Her little cottage in town remained the only one whose face went undecorated, her fireplace remained the only one empty of stockings hanging with care, and while Miriam allowed to open her door to any carolers who came knocking, the expression on her face as they sang their Christmas songs was one of patience rather than joy.

If everyone else in town loved Christmas, then it was quite clear that Miriam Plackett only tolerated it. She tolerated it the same way one might tolerate a large spider who had made a home in a corner of their kitchen that they let stay because it got rid of the mice, as a thing you didn’t quite like but certainly saw the usefulness of keeping around. She tolerated it politely, too, of course, without nary an unkind word or sour expression, but tolerate it was all she did. 

If the townspeople did not quite approve of that – if they thought it was a little sad of Miriam, if they felt badly for her – then they kept it to themselves. They could hardly complain out loud as whatever feelings Miriam had about the holiday, she kept to herself as well. The one time anyone had bluntly asked her how she felt around Christmastime, Miriam had only smiled and told them, “Oh, I’m always rather happy this time of year. There’s so much more work to do than usual, you know, what with everyone mailing out their cards and packages and such.”

And that, at least, did not surprise anyone to hear when her words were repeated around town because if you asked anyone who knew Miriam Plackett, then they’d all tell you this: she loved her job and she was damn good at it, too. 

Being a licensed mail carrier wasn’t an easy profession, but Miriam excelled at it unlike anyone else ever had before. She’d never missed a delivery, had never lost a letter, had never peeked inside a package no matter how interesting the shape or the noises it made when one shook it by their ear – not that Miriam would ever risk damaging a package by doing the latter, of course. 

Miriam had ridden her horse over the Cobalt Mountains, ventured deep into the Caverns of Yural, sailed across Nightmare Lake and squeezed her way through Dead Man’s Gorge all to get the correspondence she was responsible for to where it needed to go. She had a reputation for success and being able to deliver anything given to her to anywhere in the world. There was never a task she said no to, never a package that was too heavy or a journey too long or a potential for peril to great or---

Well, that was, there was almost no task Miriam said no to. 

There was one thing she categorically refused to do. One single thing. For every year at Christmastime, children all across the land from the township of Helge and beyond sat down to write a letter to the same person. They poured out their dearest wishes, laid bare their heart’s greatest desires, and each and every single letter started off the same.

_Dear Santa._

If it was a pity that Santa wasn’t actually real, then it was at least a blessing that Postmaster Torben Rask was. 

Every year Torben would pile up the letters in his office, pour himself a large glass of something strong, and sit down to read every letter and – to every one of them – write a response. Torben could hardly give any of the children what they asked for, whether it was a brand new doll or something even more difficult to obtain like the resurrection of a dead pet or parent, but he could give them something he thought just as important – the knowledge that they had been heard and that the magic of Christmas was the thing that had listened.

Torben would write until his hand cramped, seal the letters with red wax, and off they would go to his mail carriers to deliver to their intended recipients – with the single exception being Miriam Plackett who refused to deliver a single one.

“I don’t understand you,” Torben told Miriam that first Christmas he’d known her when his hair was more black than grey and she was still just a slip of a girl. “You’ll ride that Carrot of yours--”

“Parsnip.” 

“---that horse of yours into the Forest of Thorns to deliver a package bigger than you are, but you won’t take a few letters up the road?”

“It isn’t about the difficulty,” Miriam said with her chin raised as she stared at him like her stubbornness made all the sense in the world. 

Perhaps it did to her, Torben might concede, but it certainly did not to him. 

“It’s about the honesty,” she said. “I don’t want to lie to children.”

“It’s not a lie,” Torben defended. “It’s –“

“They write letters to a man that doesn’t exist, that get opened by you who do not bear the name of the intended recipient of those letters, who writes to them pretending to be the recipient – how is it not a lie?”

Torben huffed. “Fine, it’s a lie, but it’s a harmless lie.”

“Lies are only harmless until they’re discovered and then they just hurt,” Miriam said matter of factly, and well – Torben hadn’t a clue what to say to that.

“I don’t mind going through the Forest of Thorns,” Miriam went on after a beat of silence had lasted a beat too long, “or over the Cobalt Mountains or anywhere else. I don’t mind fighting wild dogs and dragons and goblins and gnomes along the way. I like this work and I think I’m very good at it, but I don’t want to lie to anyone or be a party to lies. I know this is my first job and all but I don’t think that’s very much to ask for in a work place, now is it?”

Torben had agreed it was not and that was that. Though many years had passed since then and Miriam had delivered many kinds of mail to many kinds of people in many kinds of places, she had never once delivered a letter with Santa’s name on the front.

And so, as Christmas approached once again, Torben sat in his office and sorted through his annual stash of letters to Santa making sure no other mail had gotten misplaced in the bunch. 

He almost missed the letter that pertains to this tale, almost switched it from the pile of letters received to the pile of letters he planned to pen a response to before moving on to the next, before his hand stopped just short of placing it on the latter pile. 

Torben lifted the letter up to his eyes and squinted at the front. He read the name of the recipient once, then twice, before he opened his desk drawer and placed the letter inside of it so it wouldn’t get mixed up again. He slid the drawer shut and made a mental note to give it to Miriam in the morning. 

It would be a difficult delivery, Torben thought as he went back to his business moonlighting as a fat man in a jolly red suit, but Miriam had yet to fail to accomplish a task. Torben had enough faith in her to believe she wouldn’t fail for the first time now, especially not when it was so close to Christmas and it seemed impossible for even the greatest of miracles to not come true.

*

The morning of December Twenty-third started off as most of Miriam’s mornings did: earlier than the sunrise, before the rooster that belonged to the inn down the road could crow. She stretched as she got out of bed and dressed quickly in warm layers before she made her way to the kitchen to make a breakfast of eggs, bacon, crusty bread with apple butter spread across it, and coffee as black as night poured into the largest cup she owned. She took her time eating in her chair by the fire, letting the food fill her as the heat sank down into her bones, and so when she finally left her cottage, she was sated and warm enough that not even a walk down to the Post Headquarters in the snow could cool her down. 

She walked into the building and the voices of her colleagues immediately replaced the quiet of the snowy dark outside.

“--heard they’re sending mail by pigeons in Tybble now.”

“Pigeons?”

“Pigeons! Damned rats with wings and they’re going to trust the post to them! I’m telling you, Agnes, we’re all going to be out of a job soon.”

“We’re not going to lose our jobs to pigeons, Frans. Honestly. How much weight can a pigeon even carry? I had to deliver a whole cart’s worth of wooden furniture the other week. I doubt a pigeon can carry all that.”

“Have you seen the size of the damn things they’re breeding up north, Agnes? I – oh, Miriam! Good morning! Torben is looking for you. Said to tell you to come see him as soon as you got in.”

“Morning, Miriam,” Agnes said.

“Thank you, Frans, and good morning to you and Agnes, too,” Miriam replied, and started her way to Torben’s office while they resumed their conversation.

“---the size of bears, Agnes!”

The voices faded behind her as she got further away until Miriam was standing in Torben’s open office door. She could see him sitting at his desk writing away at his letters, but when she knocked against the wall he looked up, put down his quill, and motioned her inside.

“Cold morning, Miriam?” Torben greeted her.

“It’s winter,” she said as she took a seat across from him. “All the mornings are cold.”

“Ah, I suppose you’re right about that. I don’t know if it’s getting colder every year or if my bones are just getting older. You still get around like you’re a teenager but I swear I can barely make it down the stairs most mornings.”

“You’ve been saying that every winter for the last twenty years that I’ve known you.”

“Yes, and every winter it’s truer than the last.”

“Mmm.” Miriam made a noncommittal noise. “Do you have something for me, then?”

“Yes, actually,” Torben said. He looked away from her to pull open his desk drawer and from that, he pulled out a letter. He handed it over to her and Miriam reached out to take it. “Tell me what you think about that.”

Miriam looked at the recipient name on the envelope. She stared for a moment at the neat scrawl of it. Then she looked back up at Torben.

“I think someone hasn’t spent enough time on their child’s spelling lessons,” Miriam told him. She held the letter out to Torben for him to take it back, but when he made no move to take it Miriam looked at him in askance. “What do you want me to do with this, Torben? You know I don’t want anything to do with these Christmas letters of yours.”

“Every child knows how to spell Santa’s name and knows to address their letters to him to the North Pole. I’ve never gotten one that didn’t get it right. That isn’t Santa’s name and there’s no recipient address listed, so I’m inclined to think that Santa is not the intended recipient and that means I need someone to deliver it.”

Miriam blinked at him a few times. She was caught off guard which was a circumstance she rarely found herself in. 

She quickly recovered and asked, “Is this a joke?”

“It is not.”

Miriam looked back down at the envelope and stared at it like it contained some kind of answer.

The envelope was not very forthcoming. It did not change. 

_To Satan,_ it still read in its center.

And in the upper left hand corner, it still bore the same:

> _Dagny Ahlgren_
> 
> _The only house down Willow Road_

“I didn’t know anyone lived down Willow Road anymore,” Miriam thought aloud. “There’s only that old farmhouse down there, yeah?”

“Yes and a family moved into it a few years back. Just the mother and child, don’t know about any father. Keep to themselves, mostly. Never get any mail that I know of, so you likely wouldn’t have cause to meet them.”

“And are they spooky sorts, this family?” Miriam looked up from the envelope to raise a brow at him. “The type who you’d expect to be writing letters to the devil as casually as they’d order a jar of milk and a basket of eggs?”

Torben raised his own brow back at her. He looked entirely undeterred. “I’ve only ever met the mother once at the market a long while back, but I can’t say there was anything spooky about her, no. Then again I also wouldn’t have thought old Maude Breiner the sort to collect the swords she gets delivered to her every month or Fred Engstrom to write the sort of racy scrolls he ships out by the box load. It isn’t our job to question who is mailing or receiving what, Miriam, only to see to it that the mail gets to where it needs to go. You know that.”

Miriam let the gentle rebuke wash over her and resisted the urge to squirm in her seat at the little flare of guilt it sparked in her chest. 

“Alright,” she said after a moment. “But how exactly am I supposed to get this mail to where you think it’s supposed to go? The last I checked there weren’t any red fellows with forked tongues living in Helge.” 

“Well,” Torben drew the word out, scratching at his beard, “hell is underground, isn’t it? Maybe you should start with that.”

“Start with what?”

“Start digging.”

Miriam laughed only to stop immediately and have her brief flash of amusement dry up at the serious look on Torben’s face.

“Are you quite sure this isn’t a prank?” she asked him, unable to keep the suspicion from her voice. “Because really –“

“Miriam,” he cut her off, “when have you ever known me to joke about the mail?”

Miriam’s mouth snapped shut as she well knew the answer to that question was never.

“So, digging,” Torben said. He broke eye contact with her to pick up his quill and go back to his letter writing, clearly thinking their meeting was coming to a close. “You know the Caverns of Yural were only discovered because someone wanted to send a care package to the dwarves they thought lived underground there? I’m sure that the mail carrier who delivered that thought it was funny when they got their assignment, too.”

“Bjorn Agnarsson,” Miriam recalled the name from her days as a young mail carrier in training reading textbooks about mail carriers of the past. “Those dwarves tried to eat him, Torben.”

“Tried being the operative word, Miriam. They only tried to eat him, but in the end they didn’t and now we have mail going back and forth to the Caverns all the time. I have faith that you will be just as successful as old Bjorn.”

“At delivering this letter or not getting eaten?”

“At both, preferably.”

Miriam bit back a scoff. “Well then, I guess I’ll just go see about borrowing a shovel, shall I? And do you have any idea of where it is I should start digging?”

“Hmm. Try near that dead apple tree a little outside of town. The devil likes apples, doesn’t he? I suppose that’s a good a place as any.”

Miriam stared at Torben’s bent head and wondered once again if this was all some elaborate ruse, but no. Torben was right – he wasn’t one to joke about their work. She looked down at the envelope in her hands, tracing Dagny Ahlgren’s name with her finger, and for the first time in her career she was tempted to open someone else’s mail. 

She squashed that temptation like it was a cockroach underfoot and felt horrified with herself for feeling it in the first place.

Miriam stood and tucked the letter deep within her pockets where it would be safe from any harm.

“If I do get eaten by something, I hope you know I’m coming back to haunt you,” she told Torben. 

“And a merry Christmas to you, too, Miriam,” Torben replied without looking up. “Good luck.”

Miriam resisted the urge to scoff again and headed out of the office. 

On her way through the building, she once again overheard Agnes and Frans’ conversation – 

“--why anyone would trust a pigeon with the brain the size of a pea rather than a person.”

“If the pigeons are the size of bears then shouldn’t they have bear sized brains?”

“For god’s sake, Agnes, what do you think I am? An ornithologist? I –“

– but the words disappeared into nothing as Miriam went out the front door and back into the cold.

*

“This really is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever done,” Miriam found herself panting some hours later. “Most certainly it’s just a child who can’t spell, but – oh, why did I let Torben talk me around to this, huh? Twenty years doing this work and you’d think I knew better.”

Her only company, a speckled white pony named Parsnip who had been with her for all twenty of those years, only huffed in sympathy and kicked at the ground with his hooves where he stood patiently nearby while Miriam used all of her considerable strength to force the shovel she had borrowed from Maude Breiner into the frozen earth beneath a barren apple tree.

It didn’t take very long after leaving headquarters to make it there. Old Maude hadn’t asked any questions when Miriam showed up at her door asking to borrow the strongest shovel she owned, but only wanted to talk about the latest sword she had purchased and how it was supposedly made with goblin forged steel which was apparently very rare. Miriam kept her responses to the minimal appropriate noise making but she wasn’t sure if she was happy about that or not. She so wanted to talk to someone else about the task she had been set to if only to have that someone agree with her that it was a mad idea and wild goose chase all rolled up in one, but she had never been the type to share her feelings before and she didn’t really want to start now.

She was quite sure if she slipped up once, word would get around and she’d be besieged by people who suddenly thought she was happy to talk with them for hours about all of her thoughts and feelings. Miriam couldn’t think of anything worse, frankly.

Asocial, Torben had called her more than once and Miriam couldn’t find it in herself to disagree. It wasn’t that she disliked people, because she didn’t. She just couldn’t stomach being around them except for in the smallest of doses, the same way she could only stomach eating very rich sweets one bite every now and again. The sweets themselves weren’t so bad and Miriam quite liked them on the occasions she had a craving for them, but all the same she had never wanted to make a full meal out of sugar alone.

Torben was the only one she could stand being around for a little longer than most, but then Torben didn’t really expect anything from her except for her to do her job. Other people expected more. They expected friendly greetings to evolve into longer conversations about mundane things that didn’t matter and for that to evolve into sharing secrets and crying on each other’s shoulders and before you knew it you’d have a spouse, a few children, and a gaggle of friends who all wanted to be kept appraised of every aspect of your life up to the point you dropped dead and they all gathered at your funeral to mingle over your grave.

It all sounded so exhausting to Miriam. It always had. Digging holes in the ground in the middle of winter because you were looking for an entrance to hell was exhausting, too, but damned if it wasn’t preferable. You could train yourself to get better at physical labor, but Miriam had never found work of the emotional and interpersonal sort to get any easier over time.

She sighed and stopped digging for a moment to wipe the sweat from her brow and drink some water from her flask, taking a moment to rest. 

The snow had stopped coming down, at least, but it had snowed so much already that there seemed to be nothing around but white for miles and miles in any direction. The only color on the landscape was Miriam herself, the towering grey of the apple tree, Parsnip’s speckles and his big brown eyes, and the darker brown dirt of the hole she was digging. 

Already Miriam had cleared out a good few feet down, but she hadn’t a clue how much longer she should dig or even what she was digging for. Did she go down until the hole was deeper than she was tall? Did she stop before it got dark and go back to Torben with the first failure of her career looming behind her like a rotting shadow?

Miriam was aware of the letter she carried in her pocket like it weighed much more than it actually did. One of the first vows mail carriers took was the promise to never, ever open someone else’s mail upon penalty of death and Miriam had always taken that vow seriously. She had no designs on breaking it now, of course, but oh how she longed to know what the letter said. It would be so easy to confirm her suspicion that Dagny Ahlgren had just made a simple spelling error on the envelope if she could just read the letter itself. 

Undoubtedly it was just a request for a toy or a puppy or some other childish foible, something Torben could deal with in that dishonest way of his that Miriam had never approved of. She knew his heart was in the right place, but it was still despicable in her eyes. Miriam still remembered when she was a child and had found out Santa wasn’t real, that all along it had been her father scrapping coins together and buying the gifts she had begged for only to give the credit to a man who didn’t even exist.

The guilt that had eaten away at Miriam when she found out, the shame of how selfish she had been, how ungrateful – it made her sick just thinking about it even now with her childhood so far behind her.

She shoved the memories to the back of her mind and sighed, the steam of her breath visible in the air. 

“I almost hope this Dagny Ahlgren meant to write to the devil, Parsnip,” Miriam said aloud as she once again started to dig. “At least the devil can hardly disappoint y--”

**Thunk.**

Her words cut off as her shovel suddenly hit something hard enough to make a jolt of pain reverberate up her arms. The thunk of it was followed by a curse that Miriam let out (and Parsnip snorted his disapproval of) as it really did sting, making her wrists vibrate from the shock of the impact like she was wearing bracelets made of bees.

Miriam looked down at the hole in a considering way before she tapped at the dirt with her shovel again, though not nearly so hard as before. A softer thunk sounded like metal hitting metal, a hammer on a nail sort of sound. 

Then like magic the dirt in the hole began to fall away. 

It revealed what looked like a rectangular metal plank until the dirt kept falling, descending downward to reveal another plank and another, each one a little further down than the last until Miriam could no longer deny what it was she was seeing.

A staircase.

It was a staircase descending down into the earth.

Miriam stared at it and Parsnip made a whinnying sound as he stared at it, too.

“Well,” Miriam started, then stopped as suddenly a small orange light appeared on the inside wall of the hole. It was followed by more orange lights lighting up the darkness going down the stairs like a series of candles attached to the dirt but only their flames were visible. 

“Well, at least I’ll be able to see my own hands out in front of me on the way down,” Miriam muttered. 

She was mildly surprised that she was seeing it at all, but it wasn’t truly shocking, only unexpected. Miriam had met the dwarves that lived in the Caverns of Yural and the gnomes who lived over Shadybrook Hill. She had once delivered a package to a princess that lived in a tower with no front door and had to climb the back of the dragon who lived on the land with the girl to deliver the package to her through an open window. 

Miriam wasn’t a stranger to magical things and magical creatures. She just hadn’t expected the devil to be any more real than Santa Claus, was all.

“Though I suppose whatever’s down there remains to be seen, Parsnip,” Miriam told her horse. She gave the animal a pat on the head before sighing. “Wait for me here, then.”

Parsnip made a sound Miriam took as agreement and so without further delay, Miriam began her descent.

*

The passageway was narrow and straight, the steps themselves sturdy and the dirt of the walls packed tight on either side of her. The air was thick and smelled strongly of freshly tilled soil. The scent wasn’t unpleasant, but it made Miriam’s nose twitch intermittently with a need to sneeze that refused to be realized and that was just a tad bit annoying. Other than the sound of her own footsteps, it was as silent underground as it was above, though it was a fair deal warmer. The temperature seemed to increase the further down Miriam went and after being in the cold for so long she couldn’t quite mind it even if she was starting to sweat under her many layers of winter clothes.

She counted the steps as she walked down them and had just stepped off of number ninety nine when her feet hit flat stone floor. There was nowhere deeper for her to go. The little flamed lights along the wall stopped with the steps so Miriam could only see another foot or so in front of her before there was nothing but pitch black darkness. Miriam squinted into it, trying to make out any kind of shape. She was so focused that when a voice spoke out from within that dark, she couldn’t stop herself from jumping.

“Who is it that stands before me?” came the words from the dark in a gravely voice that sounded to Miriam like that of an older man who had spent a lifetime smoking a pipe. 

Miriam cleared her throat and stood up straighter, mentally scolding herself for startling like some green behind the ears trainee delivering her first package. 

“My name is Miriam Plackett,” she replied in a clear, calm voice. “I come from the town of Helge –“ 

“And now here you are in hell,” the voice in the dark drawled back at her before she could finish speaking. “No doubt you are here to make some sort of deal, Miriam Plackett from Helge?”

“No, I –“

“Do you want eternal youth?” the voice interrupted again. “Would you like to be rich? To be beautiful? To have some suitor who has never looked at you twice fall in love with you at last?”

“I don’t –“

“Or is it knowledge you seek? Do you come to ask me for an apple to bite into that will reveal to you all the secrets of the world? Would you like the power to read minds? Do you desire --” 

“Actually,” Miriam raised her voice, adding some force to the word, “I don’t want anything from you. I’m just here to deliver a letter.”

The voice in the dark was silent for a long moment and then – 

“A letter?” the voice finally asked, like the concept of such a thing as simple as receiving the mail was incredibly novel.

Miriam pulled the letter in question from within the pockets of her clothes where it had been since she left Torben’s office. 

“It’s addressed to Satan,” she said and there was that long pause of silence again before it was broken this time not by words, but by a sound like a horse’s hooves clopping across stone.

It was only a moment later that from out of the dark emerged a tall figure that towered over Miriam. She looked up at him and then up some more. She noted to herself almost absently that if this was the devil then he was not red like the drawings of the devil she’d sometimes seen in books, but was instead covered in fur as black as the night sky. His face was that of a goat, but larger, and fur grew longer at the bottom of his face and around his mouth somehow giving him the appearance of a beard. He had two ears that hung down the sides of his head and from further atop emerged two golden brown horns that curved backwards and slightly off to either side of him. He wore a long black robe that looked quite warm to Miriam, though why he’d need it when he had his fur and it was so warm down there already she couldn’t begin to guess.

His dark eyes bore into her as he held his hand out in front of himself. It was larger than a human hand and covered in fur, but it had five fingers and looked otherwise quite similar. 

It was also palm up and expectant. 

“Then the letter is for me,” the creature who was Satan said and so Miriam put the letter into his hand and watched him as he held it, peering curiously at the envelope. 

The sharp black talon of his index finger trailed the handwriting on the front in the same way Miriam had trailed it with her own finger back at headquarters. She wondered if he’d ever gotten a letter before or if this was the very first one.

He used his talon to open the envelope and, more carefully than Miriam might have expected, pulled a single sheet of paper out. He held the letter, his eyes moving as he read it, his mouth pursed. Miriam acknowledged the curiosity that was tickling at her belly even as she understood it was none of her business what the letter said. 

And then finally he raised his eyes to hers again. 

“This letter requires a response,” Satan told her in a tone so grave one might’ve thought he was informing her about a death in her family instead. “You will take me to this Dagny Ahlgren so that I might give it to her.” 

Miriam blinked at him. “But – that isn’t really necessary. You can just write a letter back and I’ll take it to her.“

“The response,” Satan drawled out ominously, “must be made in person. It is necessary. I cannot simply write it down on a mere slip of paper.”

Miriam could think of nothing to say to that. Never in her twenty years of being a mail carrier had a recipient insisted that she take them with her to respond to a letter they received in person. She’d quite hate her work if any recipient ever made a habit of it, frankly.

Satan peered more closely at Miriam at her lackluster response. “Do you not know where this Willow Road is located?”

The question was offensive to Miriam and she had to bite her tongue on the ire it built in her. She settled for raising her chin a little higher and making her voice a little colder. “I’m a licensed mail carrier, sir. It’s my job to know where people and places are and to get the mail to them.”

“Then you will have no trouble escorting me to the only house down this Willow Road where Dagny Ahlgren lives,” Satan told Miriam. “And you will do so now.”

Satan did not wait for Miriam to say anything else. He simply walked past her, his hands clasped behind his back and hooves clopping from beneath his robes, and began making his way up the staircase leaving Miriam to huff in exasperation before following after him, rushing to keep up. 

*

Satan’s stride was longer than Miriam’s and so by the time she’d made her way up the stairs and out of the ground, he was already standing above waiting. It had started snowing again at some point while she was under. The white flakes of it had gathered in Satan’s fur, sticking to his face and giving him the appearance of having a white mustache to go along with the beard. 

If he was bothered by it, he didn’t show it. He only looked up at the old apple tree above them in a curious way while nearby Parsnip, loyal horse that he was, eyed their new companion in suspicion. 

“I don’t think you’re going to fit on my horse,” Miriam said. 

“I’ll walk,” he replied without looking at her. 

Miriam resisted the urge to sigh. 

That dragon she’d met had better manners.

“Alright, then,” she said and then mounted Parsnip. “I trust you can keep up?”

Satan said nothing, but made a soft sound that might’ve been a laugh or just an exhalation of air. Miriam couldn’t tell, though she supposed it didn’t really matter. She once again resisted sighing herself and set Parsnip in motion, keeping his pace slower than she’d usually like just in case Satan couldn’t keep up after all.

His silence held as they traveled through the snow, Miriam riding her horse and Satan’s great hulking form walking next to them gathering more and more snow in his fur as they went. Miriam didn’t know whether she preferred the quiet or not. She had no real desire to talk to him – no more than she had to talk to anyone else – but she was still curious about what all of this business was about. What had the letter had said? How did he plan to respond? And why in the world couldn’t he just write a letter back like a normal person? 

The ride to Willow Road was not particularly long, at least, though the snow and their slowed pace made it take more time than it would’ve had Miriam been on her own or had it been any season other than winter. Before long the white of the world gave way to an old, greying sign post sticking out of the ground. It had the words Willow Road painted on it in blocky black letters and an arrow pointing northward beneath it. They only rode for a little longer before the farmhouse appeared in the distance. Miriam saw Satan’s ears twitching and flicking off some accumulated snow as he caught sight of it and pressed her lips together to stifle her smile at how ridiculous he looked.

The last time Miriam had seen the old farmhouse was years and years ago when she first became a mail carrier. She was fresh out of training and was riding around Helge to get the lay of the land. It had been abandoned then and quite dilapidated, but as they approached it now it was obvious that someone had moved in at some point in the years after. The paint that had been old and chipping had been replaced by a fresh new coat, the holes in the roof had been patched, and there was smoke coming from the chimney. There was also a snowman in the front yard, the black buttons of its eyes and mouth smiling at them, a matching black scarf wrapped around its neck and the pointy orange end of a carrot sticking out from the middle of its face.

Miriam dismounted from her horse once they were a few paces away and Parsnip went over to the snowman to investigate the carrot of its nose which Miriam didn’t think the poor cold fellow would have for much longer. Satan had already walked ahead of her to stand on the house’s front porch. He did nothing more than brush the snow from his fur before he raised a fist and knocked three times while Miriam stood a little bit behind him. 

A moment passed before she heard the sound of the door being unlatched. Satan was so large that he blocked out most of the doorway, but Miriam could tell enough to see it being tentatively opened and how Satan’s head shifted to look down at whoever had answered.

There was a long pause and then – 

“Hello?” a young girl’s voice came. It sounded bright though it held a note of uncertainty to it.

“Hello,” Satan answered her, his own voice the utter opposite of girl’s. “I’ve come to see someone by the name of Dagny Ahlgren who lives in the only house down Willow Road. Might you tell me if you know who that is?”

“Of course I know who that is,” said the girl, this much more confidently than her previous greeting. “I’m Dagny Ahlgren and this is my house.”

“Then it is you who I’ve come to see. Would you allow me inside so that we may talk out of the cold?”

“I’m not supposed to let people in when I’m home alone but – well, I suppose you’re not really just a person, are you?”

“I am not. However, my guide here is.” 

Satan stepped to the side then, offering Miriam the first look she’d had at Dagny Ahlgren and Dagny Ahlgren a first look at her.

The girl was small, was Miriam’s impression of her. She had always been terrible at telling children’s ages, but this one was little with delicate features that added to the idea in Miriam’s mind that she was quite young. Certainly no older than ten, maybe. Her green eyes blinked at Miriam in consideration and she must have come to the conclusion that Miriam was no worse a guest to have in her home than the great goat man in her doorway for the girl stepped back and opened the door wide.

“I suppose she can come in, too,” Dagny said and went into the house.

Satan followed after her and Miriam followed him a moment behind and closed the door behind them. The room was warm from the roaring fireplace. It wasn’t very large and looked all the smaller for having Satan within it, but it looked lived in in the same homey way that Miriam’s own cottage did. 

Dagny Ahlgren sat herself in a large armchair that all but swallowed her up and Satan perched on the edge of the love seat across from it. After a moment of hesitation, Miriam sat next to him with as much space between them as the seat would allow which was not very much. However, it was the only other place she could sit unless she wanted to take the floor and Miriam wasn’t interested in doing something as foolish as that.

“I’ve never seen anyone who looked like you before,” Dagny addressed Satan. “Where did you come from?”

“Hell.”

“I’ve never been there,” Dagny replied, not even blinking at the answer. “I would think hell was very far away from here. What are you doing visiting me?”

“I visit in order to answer a letter you sent.” Satan outstretched one long arm then to hold the envelope out to her. He still held the letter itself in his other hand.

Dagny took it from him with gentle fingers. She frowned down at the face of it as she read before she looked up to meet Satan’s eyes again.

“You don’t look how I thought Santa would,” she told him.

At her words, a bolt of exasperation shot through Miriam. She bit her tongue on the desire to stand up and shout ‘I knew it’ aloud and promised herself that she’d wait until she was back at work to give Torben Rask a piece of her mind.

Meanwhile next to Miriam, Satan told Dagny in a tone as low as a grave, “I am not Santa, Dagny Ahlgren. I am Satan. I am the Morningstar, the Prince of darkness, the Great Dragon, the enemy of God and Man.”

Dagny’s frown deepened at his words. Her brows furrowed. She looked down at the envelope again.

“But I wrote Santa,” she complained and then let out a small frustrated sound. “I was so sure I spelled it right.”

“You did not,” Satan corrected her, more gently than Miriam might have expected. 

She noticed then that he didn’t actually look any more surprised at this turn of events than she felt herself.

“It’s not that I’m a bad speller,” Dagny rushed to tell him – and her eyes darted to Miriam, too, as though she wanted them both to know it. “I know how to spell things in my head. It’s just that sometimes when I write them, the letters don’t come out right but they still look right when I read them back.” 

“But what about your mother?” Miriam spoke up for the first time, drawing Dagny’s eyes to her again. “Didn’t she notice it when she went to mail the letter?”

“No,” Dagny said. The word was small, a little raindrop into a puddle sort of sound. For a second, the little girl’s lips seemed to tremble before they stopped and her tiny hands clenched into fists in her lap, crinkling the envelope she held. “Oh, no. My mother died a year ago. I’m the only one that lives here now.”

Miriam blinked at her in surprise, because – well, that couldn’t be right, could it? 

“What about your father?” Miriam asked.

Dagny shrugged one shoulder. “I never had one. Mother always said she was my mother and my father both.”

“But surely someone must be taking care of you? A guardian of some kind?”

“Well, I have an aunt who lives in Tybble,” Dagny explained. “She came here after mother died, just the once. I never met her before that and mother never really talked about her. She said she didn’t much like children so I couldn’t come live with her, but she’d send someone to me once a month to get a list of things I need and have them buy them for me until I’m grown and can take care of myself. It’s just some old fellow and he doesn’t really talk much when he comes by, but he brings me any food or clothes or anything else I ask for. I gave him the letter when he visited the other week and asked him to mail it. He didn’t say anything about the name on the envelope, so I didn’t have any reason to think it wasn’t right, but I would have fixed it if I knew. I wouldn’t just be a bother to someone by sending a letter to them that isn’t meant for them if I could help it.”

Miriam stared at the girl, aghast at the outpour of information. It was inconceivable to her that a child so young could have survived on her own for so long. Miriam had been rather independent when she was a child herself, granted, but she’d still had her father there with her. She couldn’t imagine not having had him even though she had always considered herself to be made of stronger stuff than any of the other children her age. 

Dagny Ahlgren did not look like she was made of stronger stuff. She looked like a strong gust of wind could knock her down. She didn’t even look tall enough to reach the stove Miriam saw across the room, for goodness sake. The thought of her carrying firewood, cooking her own meals, washing her own laundry, filling her own baths, all the work that it took to keep a house and a person together with no help but for some man her aunt sent over once a month – it seemed impossible.

Next to Miriam, Satan shifted on the love seat. 

“That all explains your letter, then,” he said in a musing sort of way.

Miriam turned to him immediately. The curiosity she’d felt about that letter before was just a spark then but it ignited into a flame now. 

Normally, Miriam would never pry into anyone’s mail. It went against everything she’d been taught as a mail carrier in training. You don’t ask what people are sending or receiving. You don’t open anyone’s mail but your own. These were the first lessons they learned. To do otherwise was considered entirely unethical, not to mention illegal for the latter. But still, there were exceptions to the rules. You were allowed to intervene if you thought someone was sending or receiving something dangerous, for example. If whatever was being mailed posed a threat to them or others.

Miriam didn’t know if this was a case where the rules could be ethically broken and as Torben Rask wasn’t here for her to defer to, she had nothing but her instinct to guide her. 

So, it was with some uncertainty that Miriam asked Satan, “What was in the letter?”

But it was Dagny who answered.

“It’s stupid,” she bemoaned, making Miriam turn her attention to the girl again. “I don’t even believe in Santa, honestly. Mother always told me he wasn’t real. I just...well, I just thought it couldn’t hurt to ask, could it? I thought maybe the man my aunt sends might bring the letter to her and she’d change her mind about not wanting me to live with her or she’d find me somewhere else to live. I didn’t mean for it to get sent to someone else.”

“I don’t understand,” Miriam said. “What is it you asked for?”

Dagny shifted uncomfortably in her large chair and said in a voice Miriam had to strain to hear, “Well, I asked for new parents, of course.”

Miriam stared at her, something tugging in her chest at the pathetic sight she made sitting there. She wanted to say something to comfort her and that was a rare enough occurrence to make Miriam pause on its own, but her mouth was dry as though any words of sympathy she could have offered had turned to ash on her tongue. 

There was a reason she never helped Torben with writing his letters at Christmastime and it wasn’t just that Miriam detested the lying involved in it. She also knew her own strengths and weaknesses and she knew that handling the emotions of others, particularly children, was more of the latter than the former. 

“Your mother was right, you know,” Satan spoke up where Miriam couldn’t which made her head jerk towards him in surprise. The fact that he was actually smiling was another surprise on top of it. It seemed so out of place on his face, so incongruent with the overall gruffness of his demeanor and personality. “Santa isn’t real. He never was. Even if a letter addressed to him made its way to the North Pole, there would be no one there to receive it.”

Dagny looked down at the clenched fists in her lap at his words, her lips pressed tight to stop what Miriam was sure was the same trembling she’d noticed before.

“But luckily for you,” Satan continued in a tone more happy than anything Miriam had heard from him thus far, “I am much more real than Santa Claus and I can give you exactly what you want.”

Unease stirred in Miriam’s chest and she frowned at him while Dagny’s head raised up a little and she peeked at Satan from under her lashes.

“You can?” Dagny asked uncertainly. 

Miriam tried to cut in, “I don’t think--”

But at a dark quelling look Satan sent her way, her mouth snapped shut without her wanting it to. Miriam tried to open it again, to speak, but she found that she couldn’t no matter how hard she willed herself to. She tried to stand then, too, but found herself rooted in her seat and physically unable to move.

Her heart pounded harder and she knew somehow by the way Satan looked at her that her sudden immobility was of his doing and none of her own.

“I have been called a father before,” Satan told Dagny in a voice so gentle and warm it was the total opposite of the icy look he’d sent Miriam’s way. “I could be your father if you wished it.”

“You?” Dagny asked, sounding as incredulous as Miriam felt where she was frozen still. 

“Is it so odd to think of? What is it that you would want a parent to do?”

Dagny frowned. “I’d want them to be here every day, to have meals with me and tuck me in at night and read me stories and things.” 

“And I can do all of that.”

“I’d want to be hugged, too,” Dagny added. Her eyes ran critically over Satan’s fur covered form. “You look like you’d be good at hugging.” 

“I can learn if I am not,” he replied magnanimously. 

“But why would you want to be my father?” Dagny asked suddenly. “Don’t you have a family of your own already?”

“I do not,” Satan said, “and I would not be doing this for free, of course. It is not in my nature to give gifts, only to make exchanges, and I will require something from you as well, Dagny Ahlgren, if I am to give you what it is you seek.”

Dagny frowned at him, shifting in her seat. “Something like what?”

“I will be a father to you here in this home down Willow Road until the day comes that your childhood is over and on that day,” – Satan leaned forward, staring into Dagny’s eyes – “on that day, Dagny Ahlgren, your soul will become mine for all of eternity.”

Miriam stared at him from her seat, sweating, while Dagny just blinked.

After a moment Dagny asked, “And then what?”

Satan’s smile widened in a flash of teeth that seemed more suited to a shark than a goat. He spread his hands in gesture and said, “And then we will return to hell together.”

“But,” Dagny drew out the word, “you’d still be my father then, wouldn’t you? We’d just be living somewhere else?”

“Yes,” Satan answered, sounding quite amused. “I suppose you can look at it that way.” 

“And you’ll still read me bedtime stories in hell, too?” Dagny pressed. 

“I will do so every night if you wish.”

Dagny stared him down for a long moment before at last she smiled and laughed.

“Alright,” she said happily. “We have a deal.”

“Wait!” Miriam shouted, standing up suddenly only to stop in surprise at the fact that she could stand at all.

Satan rose to his feet as well, smiling that shark’s smile of his as he towered over her.

“I must thank you for delivering this letter to me,” he said before Miriam could say a word, “but it’s getting late and I do believe it would be best for you to head home now.”

Miriam darted a glance at Dagny, still sitting in her chair looking small and curious, before she hissed at him, “What do you think you’re doing?”

Satan stared down at her with a dark storm cloud of an expression that faltered after a moment.

“It gets lonely being alone all the time, doesn’t it?” he said more than asked by way of answer. His floppy ears twitched as their gazes held and Miriam felt something communicated through them but then the moment was broken and his glower was back. 

“Have a merry Christmas,” Satan said in a way that almost made it sound like a threat and Miriam found her mouth shutting again and her feet moving towards and then out of the door. She only caught a snag of words – 

“You don’t look like a dragon. Do you have any scales?”

“I do not, though I once was a snake and had a great many.”

“Really?!”

\--- before the door closed behind her and the force of the cold winter air hit her in the face.

Miriam spun around to face the door again as soon as she was able to move, indignant, her hand going to the doorknob – and then she stopped as she heard the sound of Dagny Ahlgren’s laughter filtering out from behind the door. 

Miriam stood there with her hand on the knob for a moment before she huffed and let go of it. 

She heard a neighing from behind her and turned to see Parsnip standing by the snowman, its nose gone along with half of its snowy round skull which the horse had apparently bitten a chunk out of.

Miriam huffed again and this time knew it was a laugh. 

She headed to Parsnip and pet him on the nape. 

“Do you think she’ll be alright with him?” Miriam asked. Parsnip kicked at the ground in response. “Rotten bastard that he is, but I think he was just...tired of being alone.”

Miriam looked back at the house and sighed before groaning. She bent her head forward to press it against Parsnip’s. 

“I’m going to give Torben Rask the tongue lashing of his life when we get back,” she promised Parsnip. “To think he thought that girl meant to write the devil of all people, why all the stupid...”

Around them, the snow continued to fall. Christmas Eve was only hours away.


End file.
